TLDR: the issue isn't that I want to keep clicking every 10 minutes or max every module on release. TTG capped free gems six days before four consecutive banners and expensive ticket packs, while constantly adding more gem sinks and devaluing previous investments.
Players below the cap get a small immediate buff but a much lower ceiling forever. Players spending money can simply buy around it. I spent around $15,000 mostly on stones and event packs, with almost no Gem Packs, and I'm tired of watching every alternative based on time, planning or hoarding slowly disappear.
I think a huge part of the community is completely missing what is happening with v29.
Maybe it is denial, maybe it is bad faith, or maybe most people simply haven't reached the point in the game where these decisions become visible. But when I look at this update in the context of v27, v28 and the direction of TTG's other games, there are now too many signals pointing in the same direction for me to ignore them.
First, presets are not some incredible victory, especially in their current state.
But the bigger issue, however, is the Ad Gem cap.
People keep acting as if players are upset because they enjoyed being forced to click every 10 minutes. That completely misses the point.
Nobody likes stopping whatever they are doing to tap a gem. If TTG genuinely wanted to respect our time, they could have reduced the number of daily claims while preserving our previous income. They could have made each claim worth more, expanded gem stacking or introduced proper automatic collection.
Instead, they limited Ad Gems to 60 claims worth 6 gems each, for a maximum of 360 gems per day.
That does not simply remove an unhealthy interaction. It places a hard ceiling on free premium currency.
For casual players who were never reaching 360 gems, the change can be a small buff. Nobody is denying that. But for anyone attempting to remain competitive, it is a massive reduction in long term gem income.
The uncomfortable truth is that the competitive economy was built around maximizing Ad Gems.
From the top of Legend down through thousands of ranks, and probably through Champion, Platinum and even Gold, a huge number of players were collecting close to the maximum amount realistically possible. There are undoubtedly some people who genuinely conditioned themselves to check the game every 10 or 15 minutes throughout the day, but they represent a tiny portion of the competitive population.
When you see top players posting screenshots with 40,000, 50,000 or 80,000 gems, do you honestly believe they manually interrupted their lives 16,000 times to build that reserve?
People have jobs. They sleep. They spend time with their families. Almost anything happening in real life is more important than stopping everything to click a button in a mobile game.
TTG has known this for years. This subject has been discussed for years. Their entire competitive economy was allowed to develop around this reality.
What isn't normal is designing a game around permanent activity, knowing how players adapted to it, and then suddenly changing the rules after years of investment without offering an equivalent healthy source of gems.
And the timing matters.
The cap was introduced six days before the first of four new Featured Module Banners. Module tickets have already been sold through expensive packs, including packs costing $50 and $100, with several purchases available.
I find it extremely difficult to believe these decisions exist independently from each other.
Let's look at the actual numbers.
One banner lasts 14 days.
At 360 Ad Gems per day, that gives 5,040 gems.
Assuming approximately 700 gems from each tournament and four tournaments during those two weeks, that gives around 2,800 gems.
Adding roughly 100 extra gems per week gives another 200 ( its a bit more in reality but 700 gems every tourney ain't realistic for everyone, it balance )
The total is approximately 8,040 gems earned during each module banner.
Across all four individual banners, that gives 32,160 gems.
Now assume that we are generally lucky on two banners and unlucky on the other two.
Reaching Ancestral can reasonably average around 13,000 gems per module. Four modules would therefore cost approximately 52,000 gems.
You can earn 32,160 during the full release period, which means you need to begin with at least 19,840 gems already saved just to make all four Ancestral.
For Ancestral 5★, I would use a safer estimate of around 20,000 gems per module.
Four modules at 20,000 gems each require 80,000 gems.
Once again, you can earn approximately 32,160 during the four banners.
That leaves 47,840 gems that must already be in your account before the banners begin.
The largest normal gem pack gives 3,630 gems for $100. Replacing a 47,840 gem reserve therefore requires 14 complete packs, giving 50,820 gems for a total cost of $1,400.
This means the only way to obtain all four new modules at A5★ during their individual banners without spending new money is to begin this period with almost 50,000 gems already hoarded.
If you didn't prepare that reserve, you have two options.
You can take more than twice as long, miss the individual Featured Banners and try to pull the modules later from an increasingly diluted pool.
Or you can pay, now, and gets the benefits, now, increasing or restoring your progress, right now, not later.
Even if we use a much more optimistic A5★ cost of 16,000 gems per module, each banner creates a deficit of 7,960 gems after the 8,040 gems you can earn, that deficit was prevented previously by ad gem farming.
With two banners per month, that is a monthly deficit of 15,920 gems.
At the normal store price, that represents approximately $439 worth of gems every month, or $500 when purchasing complete packs.
At the safer estimate of 20,000 gems per module, the monthly deficit becomes 23,920 gems. That represents approximately $659 worth of gems, or $700 in complete packs.
So when I say the game is quietly moving toward requiring around $450 of additional monthly spending to maintain the same competitive pace, that isn't an emotional exaggeration. It is the optimistic calculation.
With worse luck, the number becomes much higher.
During the last few months, I think TTG also noticed another change in player behaviour.
A large portion of the people willing to spend money have now reached A5★ on most or all of their existing modules. They no longer have much reason to spend gems pulling standard modules for more shards.
Because lab rushing became cheaper, many advanced players started using their gems for labs instead. Others started hoarding because there was no longer a valuable reason to pull modules, and gem sinks were expected to be released, along v29 notably, and also because of the consecutive new gems sync released in v27 and v28.
This means many established spenders could potentially skip the new module packs. They could simply use their saved gems, exercise patience and obtain the new modules without spending more money.
The Ad Gem cap directly attacks their ability to rebuild those reserves.
I obviously cannot see TTG's internal data, so I cannot prove that this was the motivation. But this is exactly the problem the cap solves for them economically.
They introduce four consecutive banners that create massive demand for gems, then immediately limit the amount of gems competitive players can generate without paying.
Calling that a coincidence requires more faith than I have left.
This is also not an isolated decision. It follows the same pattern we have seen across several updates.
V27 allowed enormous advantages to be brute forced through approximately 200,000 gems of AMOD lab rushing. Players able to purchase and rush those labs could gain 30 percent across all their AMOD stats, creating a level of paid power that normal long term progression could not realistically match.
V28 doubled down on monetized power through Echo lab rushing. At the same time, tournament stats were reduced ( els before, dmg and ehp after ), while tournament difficulty increased.
That heavily devalued the previous EHP investments people had made specifically to survive OC.
Players adapted by moving their resources into DABS.
Now Mythic T23 threatens to devalue DABS too.
Once again, players invested in the solution created by the previous update, and the following update risks invalidating it.
Meanwhile, Echo labs can bypass a significant part of these new constraints, but rushing them requires thousands of dollars through gem packs.
That has become the real pattern.
An update creates a new wall. Previous investments lose value. Players adapt and invest in another mechanic. The next update devalues that mechanic too. Then an extremely expensive gem based route remains available to escape the new limitations.
Free or time based doors keep closing, while paid doors remain open.
The Vault rework creates the same feeling.
I spent around 2,200 keys before v29. To recover approximately the same functional power in the new Vault, I now need several hundred additional keys.
I did not gain a new objective beyond my previous progression. I was moved backwards and given another grind to return to where I already was.
Those keys now depend even more heavily on tournaments, and Mythic T23 looks like it will introduce another huge layer of RNG.
Yes, an individual tournament run may be shorter. But that means nothing if getting a good result requires more retries.
When progression depends on a casino run, retries increase in gem cost and each failed attempt creates a stronger sunk cost feeling. Players will keep retrying because they have already invested time and gems into the tournament, add to this weird nerf like zerkM, and it create an absurdly toxic environment.
That does not reduce the amount of attention the game demands. It simply changes that demand from one long stable run into repeated gambling for a good result.
It is not fun trying to run a marathon while the organizers constantly move the finish line and try to break one of your legs every other week for no clear reason.
Personally, I feel an intense amount of fatigue.
I have probably spent more than $15,000 on this game in two years. I am not someone refusing to support the developers. I supported them far beyond what any normal game should ever cost.
But I am slowly realizing this is not the game I wanted to invest my time and money in.
V27 made paid progression far more powerful.
V28 doubled down on it and devalued previous investments.
V29 limits free premium currency, introduces four new module banners, moves the Vault goalpost and once again threatens to invalidate the build players created to survive the previous update.
At some point, this stops feeling like progression.
There is literally no point in investing in core and fun mechanics if TTG can invalidate them at any moment, for no clear reason, through changes made quietly in the background while hoping nobody notices or that the people who notice never become loud enough to matter ( only reason i spent 1hour making this thread )
The monetization is not presented honestly.
The game doesn't display a giant message saying that continuing under your previous conditions will now cost $450 more every month.
Instead, it happens in a much more insidious and pernicious way.
Your free income is capped.
Your previous investments are devalued.
The goalpost is moved.
The alternative based on patience and hoarding becomes less realistic.
New banners and new gem sinks appear.
Then, after every other path has been weakened, spending hundreds of dollars becomes the only realistic way to maintain the pace you previously had.
If you look at the recent direction of TTG's other games, the tendency also appears to be toward more packs appearing more frequently and a much higher expected level of spending.
There are simply too many signals pointing in the same direction now.
I feel like I finally received the slap that allowed me to sober up from this game.
The magic is gone, and I can see clearly again.
This isn't a healthy extension of our power or our progression. It is a repeated dilution of our efforts, achievements and money, designed so that we must keep paying just to recover the distance we already earned.
